Implications of Afghanistan

Strategic Implications of 12 Unasked Questions in Response to Disaster (Part #2)

The editorial of the issue on What Went Wrong in Afghanistan (Foreign Policy, March/April 2013) -- a special report on "12 years of getting it wrong" -- is remarkably clear on the manner in which strategic issues were not discussed at the highest levels with regard to Afghanistan. The issue features a "gloves off" article by insider Vali Nasr (How Obama Let Diplomacy Fail in Afghanistan) summarizing arguments elaborated in a book (Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, 2013). His argument could be reviewed in terms of a set of unasked questions. For example, Nasr makes the point that with respect to the US administration's handling of Afghanistan:

... my time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience. The truth is that his administration made it extremely difficult for its own foreign policy experts to be heard... On the campaign trail, Obama repeatedly stressed that he wanted to get things right in the broader Middle East, reversing the damage that had resulted from the previous administration's reliance on faulty intelligence and its willingness to apply military solutions to problems it barely understood.

Not only did that not happen, but the president had the disturbing habit of of funnelling major foreign-policy decisions through a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisors whose turf was strictly politics. Their primary concern was how any action in Afghanistan or the Middle East would play on the nightly news, or which talking point it would give to the Republicans. The Obama administration's reputation for competence on foreign policy has less to do with its accomplishments in Afghanistan or the Middle East than how the U.S. actions in that region have been reshaped to accommodate partisan political concerns.